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Lawyers Against Apartheid’s 1989 Bulletin called for captured Umkhonto we Sizwe combatants to be treated as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. It also focused on South Africa’s violation of the Namibian peace accord.

Anti-apartheid supporters protested at Downing Street on the eve of President F W de Klerk’s visit to Britain in June 1989.

Poster advertising march and rally in central London, 20 June 1989, where Albertina Sisulu was the main speaker.

UDF President Albertina Sisulu was the main speaker at an AAM rally in London on 20 June 1989 protesting against F W de Klerk’s visit to London. She said de Klerk was trying ‘to improve apartheid and not to abolish it’. She was on her way the USA to meet President Bush. On her way back from the USA she led a UDF delegation which met British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

Albertina Sisulu, President of the banned United Democratic Front, and Sister Bernard Ncube of the Federation of Transvaal Women held a press conference in the House of Commons  on 13 July 1989. They were on their way back to South Africa from the USA, where they met President George Bush. During their stay in London the UDF delegation met Margaret Thatcher, the first time a British Prime Minister had met black South African anti-apartheid leaders since Josiah Gumede and Sol Plaatje held a meeting with Lloyd George in 1919.

The AAM celebrated the 30th anniversary of its founding as the Boycott Movement in 1959 with a fundraising concert at the Camden Centre in central London.

The World Gold Commission was launched in 1988 on the initiative of the Anti-Apartheid Movement, End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA), the African National Congress (ANC) and South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). It exposed the central role gold mining played in the apartheid economy and campaigned for a worldwide ban on South African gold. This report set out a three-part strategy: gold sanctions against South Africa; the release equivalent quantities of gold from other countries’ reserves; and a training programme for South African exile students to learn gold mining and marketing skills. 

In December 1988 South Africa signed the UN Plan for the Independence of Namibia, which led to the holding of free elections in November 1989. With the Namibia Support Committee, the AAM set up a Namibia Emergency Campaign to mobilise British support for Namibian independence and solidarity with the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). This leaflet warned that South Africa was sabotaging the peace process. It called for continued support for Namibia after independence.